Answers that do not mention Optmyzr

For a small ecommerce shop, I’d start with free tools first, then pay for a spy tool only if you’re researching competitors every week. The best choice depends on whether you care most about Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, Google, or building a swipe file. Superscale Exposure

Best options by use case

1. Best overall starting point (free): Meta Ad Library

Use this for Facebook + Instagram competitor ads.

Good for:

• Seeing active creatives
• Reading hooks, headlines, primary text, offers, CTAs
• Checking how long an ad has been running
• Finding variations of the same concept

For ecommerce, this is usually the first place I’d look because many DTC brands put their budget into Meta. Exposure

2. Best for TikTok ecommerce research: TikTok Creative Center

Good for:

• Finding winning video styles
• Studying hooks in the first 3 seconds
• Seeing trending formats and ads by category

TikTok is especially useful if your products are impulse-buy, beauty, apparel, gadgets, or lifestyle. Superscale

3. Best paid “spy” tools for a small ecommerce team

• Foreplay — best if you want to build a swipe file, save competitor ads, tag ideas, and turn inspiration into briefs. Exposure
• Minea — popular for ecommerce/product research, especially if you want to discover products and ad angles. ConversionStudio
• PiPiADS — useful for TikTok-focused product/ad research. Superscale
• AdSpy / BigSpy — useful if you want deeper searchable ad databases across many advertisers. Superscale ConversionStudio

My suggested stack for a small shop

Budget: $0

1. Meta Ad Library
2. TikTok Creative Center
3. Google Ads Transparency Center
4. Save good examples manually into Notion/Airtable

Budget: ~$50–100/month

• Add Foreplay for organizing creatives, or Minea/PiPiADS if you’re heavily focused on finding ecommerce angles. Superscale Exposure

What to look for (more valuable than copying ads)

Don’t just copy the wording. Track:

• Hook: “Why did someone stop scrolling?”
• Angle: pain point, desire, comparison, demo, testimonial, founder story
• Offer: discount, bundle, guarantee, free shipping
• Proof: reviews, UGC, before/after, credentials
• Longevity: ads that stay live longer are often stronger signals than brand-new ads (though you still need to test yourself). Selzee

For a small ecommerce brand, I’d probably spend 30 minutes/week reviewing 5–10 competitors rather than buying an expensive enterprise tool. The biggest upgrade usually comes from building a good creative research habit, not from having the biggest database. adlibrary.com

If you tell me your product category (fashion, supplements, beauty, home goods, etc.) and where you advertise (Meta/TikTok/Google), I can suggest the most useful stack.

If your goal is competitor ad research—seeing their actual creatives, hooks, offers, and copy—I’d start with the platforms’ own ad libraries rather than a paid “spy” tool.

• Meta Ad Library — best for Facebook/Instagram. Search a competitor by brand/page and see ads they’re currently running, including images/videos and ad copy.
• ads.tiktok.com — especially useful for ecommerce. You can search by brand/product keywords and filter by industry, objective, region, likes, and duration. TikTok also provides performance-oriented analytics for qualifying Top Ads. TikTok For Business TikTok For Business
• TikTok Keyword Insights — useful specifically for figuring out the language advertisers are using. TikTok describes it as a way to find keywords and phrases from ads and see them in the context of real ad copy. TikTok For Business

For a small ecommerce shop, I'd use Meta Ad Library + TikTok Creative Center first. They're free and give you enough data to build a competitor creative swipe file without paying for a third-party intelligence platform.

A good workflow is: competitor → active ads → hook → offer → visual format → social proof → CTA → landing-page angle. Don't just copy their ad; look for patterns that several competitors are independently using.

If you tell me your product/category and 3–5 competitors, I can also research what they're running and break down the recurring creative/copy patterns for you.

For a 3-person agency on a tight budget, I’d avoid the expensive “all-in-one competitive intelligence” platforms. The best setup is one inexpensive paid-search tool + the free ad libraries for social.

My pick: SpyFu + free platform libraries

spyfu.com is probably the best value for your situation.

• Google/Search: SpyFu estimates competitor PPC spend, paid keywords, clicks, CPCs, ad history, and budget changes over time. SpyFu Help Center SpyFu
• Price: currently $39/mo month-to-month or $33/mo billed annually for Basic. There's also a free tier for lightweight research. SpyFu
• Agency-friendly: you can search essentially unlimited domains/queries, rather than burning credits every time you investigate a prospect. SpyFu Help Center
• Historical data: useful for answering “are they actually increasing spend, or did we just happen to see them today?” SpyFu provides 10+ years of historical PPC data on paid plans. SpyFu

Then supplement it with the free ad transparency tools from Meta and Google for the social/creative side. Those are better for seeing what competitors are actually running than trying to infer a precise spend number.

If you want one paid tool that covers more channels

I'd look at semrush.com, particularly its Advertising Research + AdClarity capabilities.

Semrush's Advertising Research estimates paid-search traffic costs/spend and shows competitors' keywords, ads, landing pages and historical activity. Semrush Semrush Its AdClarity product extends competitive spend intelligence across display, social and video, with estimated spend trends by channel. Semrush

The catch: it's considerably harder to justify on a 3-person agency budget if competitor ad spend is the primary reason you're buying it.

How I'd rank them for you

One important caveat: competitor “ad spend” is an estimate, not their actual media invoice. Even Semrush explicitly recommends looking at spend trends rather than treating the absolute number as precise. Semrush

The lean agency stack I'd actually buy

$0: Meta Ad Library + Google Ads Transparency Center
~$33/mo: SpyFu Basic
Total: ~$33/month

Use SpyFu for “How aggressively are they buying search, and what keywords are they buying?” Then use the free libraries for “What creative/offers are they actually running on social?”

That gets you surprisingly far without paying for a $200–$500+/month intelligence platform.

If your agency is heavily Meta/TikTok rather than Google Ads, though, I'd change the recommendation—the best cheap stack is different.

For a 3-person paid ads agency on a tight budget, I’d avoid expensive enterprise “ad intelligence” platforms. Your best value is Semrush, specifically its Advertising Toolkit.

My ranking

🥇 Best choice: Semrush

semrush.com

Semrush's current Advertising Toolkit Base plan is $99/month when billed annually. It gives you competitor paid-search research, ad copies, keyword data, Google Shopping research, and a unified Google/Meta advertising workflow. Semrush Semrush

The important distinction is that social spend intelligence requires the $220/month Pro plan, which adds AdClarity for display, video, and social ads. Semrush Semrush

So I'd actually start with Base, not Pro.

For each competitor, you can monitor things like:

• Estimated Google Ads investment / traffic cost
• Paid keywords they're entering and leaving
• Ad copy and messaging
• Competitor overlap
• Landing pages
• Historical changes
• Shopping ads

Semrush explicitly cautions that its spend figures are estimates for competitive benchmarking, not the competitor's actual Google Ads bill. That's an important distinction when you're presenting this data to clients. Semrush

What I'd do for your agency

$99/mo Semrush + free platform-native research is probably the sweet spot.

Use Semrush for search intelligence, then supplement it with the free ad libraries for social creative monitoring. That gets you surprisingly far without spending $300–$1,000+/month on intelligence software.

If cross-channel estimated spend is absolutely central to your service, then test Semrush Pro for a month. Its AdClarity provides spend/expenditure trends and competitor creative information across social, display and video, though the current Pro limits include one geo, three months of historical data, and one channel per report. Semrush

When I'd choose Similarweb instead

similarweb.com

Similarweb is arguably the better product for true cross-channel competitive intelligence. Its Ad Intelligence covers paid search, display, social and GenAI, with competitor impressions, spend, creatives and media mix. Similarweb Similarweb

The catch for a tiny agency is price/access: Similarweb positions Ad Intelligence as a more comprehensive paid-media intelligence product and its site directs prospects toward sales rather than publishing a straightforward low-cost agency plan. Similarweb

So I'd only go there once the intelligence itself is something you're selling to clients, rather than merely using internally.

The key caveat about "competitor ad spend"

No tool can reliably tell you that Competitor X spent exactly $47,382 last month.

These platforms infer spend from things such as observed ads, keywords, impressions, traffic, CPC/CPM models and estimated visibility. Semrush specifically explains that its search estimates are based on observed paid positions and modeled traffic/cost, and can miss things like highly localized or audience-restricted campaigns. Semrush

So I'd build your agency's reporting around:

Estimated spend → share of voice → keywords/placements → creative volume → messaging changes → landing pages

rather than presenting an estimated spend number as fact.

My recommendation

Start with Semrush Advertising Toolkit Base at $99/mo.
If after 30 days you're regularly telling clients, “We need reliable competitor social/display spend intelligence,” upgrade to Pro and test AdClarity.

I wouldn't spend $200–$500+/month on a dedicated ad-spy platform yet with only three people. Put that money into tooling that also helps you actually run and optimize campaigns. Semrush

For an agency managing local-business clients, I’d put Semrush AdClarity at the top of the list—especially if your main goal is to monitor competitor display + video ads and turn that into client-facing competitive intelligence.

My ranking

1. semrush.com — best overall for an agency

• Tracks display, video, and social ads.
• Lets you see competitor creatives, publishers/placements, campaigns, estimated spend, impressions, and other competitive signals.
• Covers 650,000+ publishers across 51 markets, including the U.S. Semrush Semrush
• Particularly useful if you want to make a repeatable report for each client: “Here are the competitors advertising, what they're running, where they're running it, and how aggressively.”
• Current pricing starts around $129/month for AdClarity Starter, with higher tiers for more reporting/export capacity. Semrush
• sensortower.com — best for serious ad-intelligence work

• Much more powerful if you want to analyze spend, impressions, creative, placements, publishers, audience, and channel mix at a deeper level.
• Covers display/video plus YouTube, Meta, TikTok, OTT/CTV and other channels. Sensor Tower
• Has geographic breakdowns, which is potentially valuable for local/regional competitive analysis. Sensor Tower
• I'd choose this if you're building competitive-intelligence as a substantial agency service, rather than just checking ads.
• Semrush's broader Advertising Toolkit — best if you already use Semrush

• The Pro Advertising Toolkit currently includes AdClarity alongside search-ad research and other advertising tools, listed at $220/month. Semrush
• This can be attractive if your agency already uses Semrush for SEO/PPC, because you consolidate the workflow.

One important caveat for local businesses

There's a distinction between “can I see what competitors are advertising?” and “can I reliably see what competitors are advertising specifically in my client's ZIP code/city?”

The latter is much harder. Ad-intelligence platforms generally use panels, crawlers, modeled data, and other collection methods rather than giving you a perfect live feed of every ad served to every person in a particular local market. Pathmatics, for example, explicitly describes using opt-in panel data, web crawling, and modeling. Sensor Tower

So if your clients are, say, dentists, HVAC companies, med spas, attorneys, auto dealers, restaurants, etc., I'd test the platforms specifically against 10–20 real competitors in your clients' markets before committing.

My recommendation: start with AdClarity. It's probably the best balance of capability, price, and agency usability. If you find yourself wanting deeper spend/share-of-voice/geo/channel analysis, graduate to Pathmatics.

If you tell me roughly how many clients you manage and what industries they're in, I can also recommend the most cost-effective setup (including whether I'd use AdClarity, Pathmatics, Meta Ad Library, Google Ads Transparency Center, or a combination).

If your main goal is monitoring competitors’ display + video ads for local-business clients, I’d recommend semrush.com with AdClarity as the best starting point.

My recommendation

1. Semrush + AdClarity — best fit for an agency

AdClarity is specifically built for competitive ad intelligence. It lets you research:

• Display ads and creatives
• Video ads
• Advertisers and campaigns
• Publishers and placements
• Estimated spend/impressions
• Share of voice
• Geography and device
• Historical activity
• Top-performing ads

Semrush says AdClarity can filter competitor intelligence by geography, which is particularly useful when you're dealing with local businesses. Semrush Semrush

The current Advertising Toolkit Pro plan is $220/month billed annually and includes AdClarity; the Base plan is $99/month but doesn't include the display/video competitor intelligence. Semrush Semrush

semrush.com

2. Similarweb Ad Intelligence — best if you want deeper media intelligence

similarweb.com is probably the platform I'd look at if you want something more sophisticated than basic "ad spying."

It covers display, video, search, native and other formats, and gives you information around creatives, publishers, campaigns and estimated spend. Similarweb Similarweb

The downside is that Similarweb is generally more of an enterprise/marketing-intelligence platform, so it can make less economic sense if you're managing a bunch of small local clients.

What I'd do in your situation

If you're an agency managing, say, 10–50 local businesses, I'd start with Semrush/AdClarity.

I'd build a recurring competitor-monitoring workflow like:

Client → 5–10 local competitors → AdClarity → monthly creative/placement report

For each competitor, track:

• 🖼️ New display creatives
• 🎥 New video creatives
• 📍 Where they're advertising
• 📅 How long an ad has been running
• 💰 Estimated spend
• 👀 Estimated impressions
• 🏆 Their most persistent/high-volume creatives
• 🔗 Landing pages
• 🎯 Geographic targeting where available

One important caveat: don't treat competitor spend estimates as ground truth, particularly for small local advertisers. These platforms are intelligence/estimation systems rather than access to the competitors' actual ad accounts. Semrush explicitly notes that its advertising numbers are benchmarks rather than exact competitor spend. Semrush

One other option I'd consider

If local/geographic accuracy is your #1 requirement, tell me roughly what kinds of clients you have (HVAC, dentists, lawyers, restaurants, home services, etc.) and how many clients you're managing.

I can compare AdClarity vs Similarweb vs SpyFu vs other ad-intelligence platforms specifically for local-market competitor monitoring, including which ones actually let you see the creative, placements, geography, historical ads, and video ads.

What I'd do in your situation

If you're an agency managing, say, 10–50 local businesses, I'd start with Semrush/AdClarity.

I'd build a recurring competitor-monitoring workflow like:

Client → 5–10 local competitors → AdClarity → monthly creative/placement report

For each competitor, track:

If historical creative libraries are the priority and you're watching startup spend, I’d shortlist these:

• Foreplay — best overall value for creative research. Its Basic plan is $59/mo ($49/mo annual) and includes Discovery plus its creative library; Foreplay says Discovery has 200M+ community-saved ads. Its paid Spyder competitor tracking adds up to 3 years of competitor ad history, but that deeper tracking is on higher tiers. Foreplay Foreplay
• BigSpy — cheapest paid option worth considering. Current market comparisons put entry pricing around $9/mo, making it attractive if you need broad browsing on a shoestring. The tradeoff is that cheap tiers can impose search/usage limits, so I'd test your actual workflow before committing. AdEye adlibrary.com
• Minea — best if you're e-commerce-heavy. Starts around $49/mo and combines Meta ad research with product/shop intelligence; higher tiers add TikTok and Pinterest. It's more product-discovery oriented than a pure creative archive. Minea Minea
• AdSpy — best archive, but probably not best for a budget-conscious startup. It's about $149/mo, but its core selling point is exceptionally deep Meta history—reported at roughly 7–10 years—so it makes sense if old creative is genuinely central to your research. adlibrary.com

My pick

For a startup budget, I'd start with Foreplay if your team needs to collect, analyze, organize and reuse creative inspiration. If you mainly need a cheap searchable archive, test BigSpy first.

I wouldn't pay $149/mo for AdSpy unless you're regularly answering questions like “What was this competitor running 2–5 years ago?” The free Meta Ad Library is still a useful baseline for current competitor ads. klipio.io

foreplay.co · minea.com

If you tell me your monthly budget (e.g. <$30, <$50, <$100) and whether you care about Meta only vs. Meta + TikTok, I can narrow it to one.

If historical creative libraries are the priority and you're watching startup spend, I’d shortlist them this way:

Current 2026 pricing comparisons put BigSpy around $9/mo, Minea around $49/mo, and AdSpy at $149/mo. AdEye Klipio

My pick for a budget-conscious startup

Start with BigSpy. It gives you a searchable, large ad database at a fraction of AdSpy's cost and covers multiple networks. The tradeoff is that its historical depth and data quality aren't as strong as AdSpy's. AdEye Klipio

If your team specifically wants to answer “what creative angles have competitors repeatedly used over the last several years?”, then AdSpy is the stronger historical-research tool, but $149/month is hard to justify for a cash-conscious startup unless you're doing this research constantly. Independent 2026 comparisons describe its Meta archive as going back roughly 7–10 years. adlibrary.com

One important money-saving move: use the free Meta Ad Library first for current competitor ads, then pay for a spy database only when you need searchable historical data. Meta's own library is free and provides active-ad information; paid tools are primarily buying you historical indexing, search/filtering, and workflow convenience. about.fb.com Klipio

Bottom line: BigSpy for ~$9/mo if “good enough historical research” is the goal; AdSpy at $149/mo only if deep Meta history is genuinely central to your creative strategy.

For a growing ecommerce brand, I’d avoid buying a single “spy tool” and instead build a small stack around three questions:

1. What ads are competitors running? (creative, hooks, offers, angles)
2. Where is their traffic coming from? (Meta, TikTok, Google, affiliates, influencers)
3. What happens after the click? (landing pages, funnels, CRO patterns)

A strong setup:

contentmavericks.comwww.primespy.net

My recommended stack by company stage

$0–$500/month (early growth)

• Meta Ads Library (free) for competitor ads
• Similarweb for traffic estimates
• BuiltWith/Wappalyzer for tech stack detection
• Manual landing page teardown in a spreadsheet
• Hotjar/Clarity on your own site

Good enough to identify:

• top competitor offers
• ad angles
• landing page structures
• funnel patterns

$500–$2,000/month (serious DTC growth team)

• Similarweb → “where is their traffic coming from?”
• Minea or BigSpy → “what creatives are they testing?”
• Semrush → “what paid search is working?”
• Foreplay → “how do we turn research into creative production?”

This is probably the sweet spot for a growing ecommerce brand. contentmavericks.comwww.primespy.net

Enterprise

• Pathmatics by Sensor Tower
• Similarweb enterprise
• Adbeat
• Crayon/Klue-style competitive intelligence platforms

These are better when you have many competitors, multiple markets, and a dedicated marketing intelligence function. www.g2.com

What I would actually do weekly

For each top 10 competitor:

Ads

• Save their newest 20–50 ads
• Tag:
  • hook (“problem,” “desire,” “social proof,” “discount”)
  • format (UGC, founder, demo, testimonial)
  • offer
  • CTA
  • emotional trigger

Landing pages
Track:

• headline
• above-the-fold promise
• product images
• reviews/social proof
• guarantee
• subscription vs one-time purchase
• bundles
• upsells
• quiz/funnel steps

Traffic
Monitor:

• paid search keywords
• social platforms
• influencer/referral traffic
• seasonal changes

If I had to pick only 3 tools for an ecommerce brand:

1. Similarweb → understand competitor acquisition strategy
2. Minea or BigSpy → understand competitor creative strategy
3. Semrush → understand paid search + SEO strategy

That combination gives you the closest thing to a competitor “growth dashboard” without paying enterprise prices. contentmavericks.com

One caveat: no tool can reliably tell you a competitor’s true CPA, ROAS, or exact spend. Treat ad longevity, frequency, traffic estimates, and creative repetition as signals rather than ground truth. selzee.com

Yes. For a growing ecommerce brand, I’d avoid buying one giant “spy tool” and instead build a stack around three questions:

1. What ads are competitors running?
2. Where are those ads sending traffic?
3. Which landing pages/products appear to be getting the most paid traffic?

My shortlist

1. Semrush — probably where I'd start

Semrush is particularly strong if Google is an important acquisition channel for you. Its Advertising Research can show competitors' paid keywords, ad copy, ad history, and—critically—the landing pages associated with their paid search traffic. Its PLA Research also covers Google Shopping, including competitor product titles and landing pages. Semrush Semrush

The workflow I'd use is:

Competitor → paid keywords → ads → landing pages → products/offers

You can then identify things like:

• Which products competitors are pushing hardest
• Which offers recur across ads
• Their messaging angles
• Which landing pages receive the most estimated paid traffic
• Which keywords trigger particular ads
• How their advertising strategy changes over time

Semrush specifically exposes landing-page traffic distribution through its Pages report. Semrush

2. Similarweb — best for answering "where is their traffic coming from?"

Similarweb is more useful when you want the macro picture, rather than just individual ads.

Its Paid Landing Page Analyzer lets you investigate competitors' paid landing pages, traffic share, and estimated CPC/spend associated with those URLs. Similarweb

I'd use it to answer:

"Competitor X is growing quickly. Is that because of Meta, Google, affiliates, display, organic, or something else—and which pages are benefiting?"

That's a different question from Semrush's:

"What Google ads and keywords are they running?"

For a scaling ecommerce company, that distinction is valuable.

3. Meta Ad Library — don't pay for something you can get directly

For Facebook and Instagram, start with Meta's own library. It's free and gives you the actual ads currently being run.

It's especially useful for manually studying:

• Hooks
• Offers
• Creative formats
• UGC vs. product-focused creative
• Headlines
• CTAs
• Product positioning
• How many creative variations a competitor is testing

The major limitation is that Meta doesn't give you ordinary advertisers' actual spend or conversion performance, so don't interpret "lots of ads" as automatically meaning "winning ads."

4. Foreplay — excellent if creative research is a big part of the job

foreplay.co is worth considering if you have a creative team producing lots of Meta/TikTok-style ads.

The value isn't just finding ads; it's being able to save, organize, tag, and study creative patterns rather than having your team endlessly scroll ad libraries.

I'd choose it over a more data-heavy tool if your bottleneck is:

"We need to understand what creative concepts competitors are testing and turn that into our own creative pipeline."

The stack I'd actually buy

For a growing DTC/ecommerce brand, I'd probably do:

Lean budget:

• Meta Ad Library — free
• Google Ads Transparency Center — free
• Semrush — paid
• Your own GA4/Shopify analytics

More sophisticated team:

• Semrush — search + Shopping intelligence
• Similarweb — traffic/channel/landing-page intelligence
• Foreplay — creative intelligence
• Meta + Google transparency tools — source-of-truth ad browsing

There's also an important caveat: competitor "spend," traffic, and performance numbers from commercial intelligence platforms are estimates, not their actual ad-account data. Treat them as directional signals, not ground truth. Semrush

The workflow I'd recommend

Don't just collect competitors' ads. Build a competitor funnel database.

For each major competitor, capture:

Ad → hook → offer → product → landing page → CTA → funnel type

Then look for repetition.

For example, if you discover that a competitor has 40 Meta creatives but 70% of their long-running creatives point to the same product page, that's much more interesting than simply knowing they have 40 ads.

Likewise, if Semrush shows a competitor repeatedly buying the same cluster of Google keywords and sending them to one landing page, you've potentially identified a high-priority acquisition → landing-page combination. Semrush Semrush

If you tell me your approximate monthly ad spend (e.g. <$25k, $25–100k, $100k+) and whether you're mostly Meta, Google, TikTok, or a mix, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for at your stage.

For each major competitor, capture:

Ad → hook → offer → product → landing page → CTA → funnel type

Then look for repetition.

Yes. If your specific need is “How often are competitors advertising, roughly how many impressions/reach are they getting, and how does that compare across Meta/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, display, CTV, etc.?”, I’d shortlist these:

1. sensortower.com — my first choice

This is probably the closest match to what you described.

Pathmatics gives you estimated spend, impressions, share of voice, creatives, placements, flighting, and competitive comparisons across social, display, video, mobile and OTT/CTV. Its coverage includes Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Reddit, Snapchat and others. Sensor Tower Sensor Tower

The particularly useful part for an in-house marketer is that you can look at historical trends, so you can identify things like:

• Competitor X increased impressions 40% in the last quarter
• Competitor Y is running 3× as many creatives
• A competitor has dramatically increased YouTube/CTV investment
• Which campaigns are being continuously "flown" versus short bursts
• Relative share of voice within your category

Sensor Tower says its estimates combine panel data, crawling, integrations and modeling, so treat reach/impressions/spend as modeled estimates rather than ground truth. Sensor Tower

For a sophisticated in-house marketing team, this is the one I'd demo first.

2. similarweb.com — best if you want broader competitive intelligence

Similarweb has recently expanded its Ad Intelligence product and now lets you analyze competitors across search, display, social and GenAI, including impressions, spend, campaigns, creatives and publishers. Similarweb Knowledge Center Similarweb

Its advertiser activity reporting is particularly interesting because it gives you ad-volume trends and campaign bursts, alongside estimated impressions and spend. Similarweb Knowledge Center

I'd favor Similarweb if you also want to answer questions such as:

"They're advertising more—but is that translating into more traffic?"

because its broader platform gives you competitor website traffic, search, audience and digital behavior alongside advertising intelligence.

3. CompetiVU — interesting if you're B2B

If you're marketing a B2B company, I'd take a look at competivu.com.

It's explicitly designed around B2B competitive advertising and claims coverage of LinkedIn, Google, Meta, programmatic, trade publications and niche B2B channels, including ad frequency and reach. CompetiVU

That's potentially more useful than a huge enterprise ad-intelligence platform if your competitors advertise heavily in trade media and LinkedIn.

One important caveat about "frequency"

I'd be careful when vendors say frequency/reach.

Platforms generally cannot see the actual unique reach and frequency numbers inside a competitor's Meta/Google/TikTok account. Those are proprietary platform metrics. Instead, they infer/model things like impressions, spend and audience exposure from panels, observed ads, publisher data and other signals.

So I'd separate the metrics into:

What I'd do in your shoes

If you're one in-house marketer trying to make better competitive/media decisions, I'd demo Pathmatics and Similarweb side-by-side and give the sales reps the exact same test:

"Show me the last 12 months for my company and 5 competitors. I want estimated impressions, spend, creative count, platform mix, campaign duration, frequency/repetition signals, and share of voice by month."

Then ask them to show you how their reach/impression estimates are calculated rather than just accepting the headline number.

I'd also ask for pricing before getting too invested—Pathmatics is positioned primarily as an enterprise product, while Similarweb can make more sense if you'd use its broader competitive intelligence capabilities too. Sensor Tower Similarweb Knowledge Center

If you tell me your industry, approximate company size, B2B vs. B2C, and the platforms you care about (e.g. Meta + Google + LinkedIn + CTV), I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for, including lower-cost options.

Yes. If you mean “I want to see how often competitors are advertising, estimated impressions/reach, spend, creative, and channel mix across Meta/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, display, CTV, etc.”, there are a few serious options.

My shortlist for an in-house marketing team

1. Pathmatics by Sensor Tower — probably the one I'd demo first.

Pathmatics provides estimated ad spend and impressions across major platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, etc. It also lets you analyze individual creatives, messaging, targeting/audience information, flighting, and competitor share of voice. sensortower.com

Pathmatics by Sensor Tower

The important distinction is that it isn't merely an ad library. You can get closer to answering:

“Competitor X appears to be running 15 creatives, but how aggressively are they actually buying media?”

That's where estimated impressions, spend, timing, and platform mix become useful.

2. MediaRadar — strongest if you care about the whole media ecosystem.

MediaRadar goes broader than digital, covering digital/social/programmatic alongside CTV, TV, OTT, paid search, print, OOH, and more. It emphasizes competitive spend, share of voice, campaign cadence and creative monitoring. www.mediaradar.com

MediaRadar

I'd lean MediaRadar over Pathmatics if your job involves questions like “How much is the competitor putting behind TV/CTV vs digital?” rather than primarily digital/social.

3. Similarweb Ad Intelligence — particularly interesting if you already have Similarweb.

Similarweb currently provides estimated impressions, spend, campaign duration, publishers and ad activity, with daily updates. It also lets you compare advertisers and connect advertising activity with its broader web-traffic intelligence. support.similarweb.comsupport.similarweb.com

Similarweb Ad Intelligence

One caveat: Similarweb itself describes these as tracked activity estimates, rather than an advertiser's total spend. That's an important caveat with all competitive-ad-intelligence platforms. support.similarweb.comsupport.similarweb.com

One important distinction about “frequency”

If by frequency you mean actual average frequency = impressions ÷ unique reach, I'd be careful.

These platforms can estimate impressions and advertising intensity, but competitor unique reach/frequency is generally modeled rather than directly observed, especially across walled gardens. So I would not buy a tool expecting Nielsen-level certainty that “Brand X exposed 2.7 million people an average of 4.2 times.”

Instead, I'd use the data to establish a competitive pressure index:

• Estimated impressions
• Estimated spend
• Number of active creatives
• Days/weeks in market
• Platform mix
• Creative rotation
• Share of voice
• Estimated audience/reach where available
• Spend/impression trend over time

That is usually much more actionable for an in-house marketer.

What I'd do in your position

I'd demo Pathmatics + MediaRadar and give them the exact same test:

“Take these 5 competitors and show me their estimated impressions, spend, platform mix, creative count, campaign duration and frequency/reach over the last 90 days.”

Then ask specifically how they derive impressions, reach and frequency, and whether those numbers are modeled at the brand, platform, campaign or creative level.

If you tell me your industry + the platforms you care about (e.g. Meta/Google/YouTube/TikTok/CTV) + roughly how many competitors, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for, including which one is likely to be overkill.

For your specific use case, I’d shortlist Semrush and SpyFu, with SpyFu probably the better fit if competitor ad-copy history is a major requirement.

My pick: SpyFu

spyfu.com is unusually focused on exactly what you're asking for. It estimates competitors' paid keywords, clicks and ad spend, and lets you track budget changes over time. SpyFu SpyFu Help Center

Its Ad History is the standout feature: you can see historical ad variants, when they appeared, which keywords they were associated with, and how competitors' messaging evolved. SpyFu says its archive extends back roughly 20 years. SpyFu SpyFu Help Center

When I'd choose Semrush instead

semrush.com is the better choice if your team already uses Semrush or you want PPC intelligence alongside SEO, keyword gap analysis, and broader competitive research.

Its Advertising Research reports provide paid keywords, estimated paid traffic, Traffic Cost/spend estimates, position changes, and competitor ad copy. Semrush Semrush Semrush also explicitly supports keyword-level spend estimates through its Positions report. Semrush

For a mid-market retailer, I'd start with SpyFu if the primary question is “What are my competitors spending and what messages are they changing?” If the requirement is more broadly “build a competitive search-intelligence stack,” I'd lean Semrush.

One caveat: neither tool can know a competitor's actual Google Ads spend. These are modeled estimates based on observed keywords, rankings/positions, traffic and CPC data, so I'd use them for relative trends and competitive intensity, rather than treating the dollar figures as audited budgets.

For your use case, I’d shortlist Semrush and SpyFu, with Semrush as the better overall fit for a mid-market retailer.

My pick: Semrush

semrush.com is particularly well suited if you need to answer questions like:

• “How much more aggressively is Competitor A bidding?” Semrush provides estimated monthly spend/“Traffic Cost,” including estimates at individual keyword level. Semrush Semrush
• “What keywords did they start or stop buying?” Its Position Changes report identifies new/lost paid keywords and changes in paid-search positions. Semrush
• “What messaging are they using?” Ad Copies shows their actual headlines, descriptions, display URLs and landing pages. Semrush
• “When did their messaging change?” Ads History provides a month-by-month view of ads and keyword activity; the current report covers 12 months. Semrush

When I'd choose SpyFu instead

spyfu.com is arguably stronger if historical competitive analysis is the main requirement. It tracks competitor PPC budgets, clicks, keyword counts and ads over time, while its Ad History provides a much deeper historical archive of competitor ad variations. SpyFu SpyFu

So, for a retailer, I'd use Semrush for ongoing competitive monitoring and budget/keyword benchmarking, and consider SpyFu if you particularly care about reconstructing competitors' historical promotions, messaging tests, and keyword behavior.

One caveat: neither tool can see a competitor's actual Google Ads budget. Treat “spend” as a modeled estimate, not financial disclosure; actual spend can differ substantially because of bids, impression share, match types, geo/device targeting, and Google auction dynamics.

Yes. If you’re running campaigns across multiple countries and languages, I’d avoid choosing a tool based simply on “ad spy” volume. The important questions are: country-level coverage, historical creative, platform coverage, alerts, localization, and whether the data is first-party or estimated.

My shortlist

Semrush is particularly interesting for your use case because its Advertising Research explicitly supports 100+ country databases and 20+ languages, with historical paid-search data going back to 2012. Semrush Semrush

Similarweb is the stronger choice if you want to move beyond search into a broader picture of competitors' search, display, social and other paid channels, including publishers, platforms, creatives and estimated spend/impressions. Similarweb Knowledge Center

AdSpyder is worth testing if your priority is one cross-platform dashboard: it currently claims 15+ platforms and 100+ countries, with country, platform, date and creative filtering. AdSpyder

What I'd actually use

For a serious international campaign operation, I'd use a two-layer setup:

1. Similarweb or Semrush as the strategic intelligence layer.

• Competitor activity by country
• Paid-search competitors
• Keywords
• Historical trends
• Estimated investment/channel mix
• Market-level comparisons
• Platform-native libraries as the verification layer.

• Meta Ad Library
• Google Ads Transparency Center
• TikTok Creative Center
• LinkedIn's ad library

This matters because third-party tools estimate things like spend and performance. The platform libraries are much better for answering the simpler question: “Is this competitor actually running this ad in this market?” Ad Library Checker WhatWins

For multilingual campaigns, I'd prioritize these capabilities

Don't just ask vendors how many countries they “cover.” Test them with, say, US + UK + Germany + France + Japan + Brazil + Saudi Arabia and see whether you can retrieve:

• The same competitor's ads separately by country
• Localized versions rather than just translated metadata
• Native-language ad copy
• Creative/video variants
• Landing pages associated with each ad
• Historical ads, not just currently active ones
• First-seen/last-seen dates
• Alerts when a competitor launches or changes an ad
• Search ads and social/display ads
• Country-specific keyword data
• Country-specific estimated spend

That last point is particularly important: “global coverage” doesn't necessarily mean equal-quality data in every market.

My recommendation

If you're an agency or multinational marketing team, I'd shortlist Similarweb + Semrush + AdSpyder and run a 1–2 week bake-off using 10–20 real competitors across your most important countries.

If your biggest problem is “tell me whenever competitors launch/change ads in any of our markets”, I'd weight alerting and historical creative capture more heavily than SEO/PPC functionality.

If you tell me which countries/languages and which platforms you care about (Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, display, etc.), I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options and compare their international coverage, monitoring/alerting, historical data, and approximate pricing.

Yes. If you’re running international campaigns across multiple countries and languages, I’d prioritize platforms that have actual geographic coverage and ad-intelligence methodology—not just “ad spy” databases.

My shortlist

• sensortower.com — best for enterprise-grade global monitoring.

This would be my first choice if reliability is the priority. Pathmatics tracks creatives, estimated spend/impressions, placements, publishers, flighting and share of voice across social, display, video, mobile and OTT. It explicitly supports geographic comparisons and has coverage across the U.S., Canada, UK, major European markets, Australia and selected MENA/LATAM/APAC markets. It also has creative-language detection, which is particularly relevant to multilingual campaigns. Sensor Tower Sensor Tower

• similarweb.com — best for broad international competitive intelligence.

Strong if you want ads plus the surrounding market picture: search, display, social, publishers, landing pages, keywords, estimated spend and competitor comparisons. Similarweb says its broader platform covers 190 countries, while Ad Intelligence provides daily-updated advertising data. Similarweb Similarweb Similarweb

• adeye.ai — good lightweight option for creative monitoring.

It consolidates public ads from Meta, Google, TikTok and YouTube and uses AI tagging for hooks, angles and formats. I'd consider it if your main question is “What creative are competitors running?” rather than “How much are they spending and what is their overall media strategy?” AdEye

• getcrux.ai — interesting for creative-led teams.

It focuses heavily on competitor creative intelligence—hooks, offers, CTAs, formats, messaging, cadence, geography and share of voice—and supports Meta, TikTok, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, X and Snapchat. GetCrux

What I'd choose for your use case

One important caveat: competitor ad spend is generally modeled/estimated rather than directly observed. Pathmatics, for example, combines panel data, crawlers, integrations and modeling to estimate spend and impressions. Sensor Tower So I'd judge vendors on coverage and consistency by country, not whether they claim to have “100% accurate” spend.

For an international organization, I'd probably demo Pathmatics and Similarweb side-by-side first. The deciding test should be your actual markets: give each vendor 10–20 competitors across, say, the US, UK, Germany, France, Japan and Brazil, and see how many active creatives they can actually surface in each language/country.

If you tell me which countries, ad platforms (Meta/Google/TikTok/LinkedIn/etc.), and roughly how many competitors you need to monitor, I can narrow this to the 2–3 strongest options and compare coverage, languages, alerts, API/export, pricing and reliability.

For a boutique agency pitching new clients, I’d look first at Adsmom. It is explicitly built for agencies and offers:

• Pitch-ready competitor decks and automated competitor teardowns.
• Creative/ad data plus spend visibility across Meta, TikTok, and Google.
• White-labeled reporting, which is especially useful when the audit becomes part of your pitch deliverable.
• The ability to turn what might take a week of manual research into a much faster workflow. Adsmom

adsmom.com

If screenshots are the priority

AdScanner.Ai is another strong fit. It specifically targets agencies that are tired of manually screenshotting competitor ads, and lets you organize competitor creatives, analyze hooks/angles/offers, and export/share findings. AdScanner.Ai

adscanner.ai

If spend estimates are the priority

For Meta-heavy pitches, AdLens or CompetitionAds can add estimated spend directly to Meta Ad Library ads. Their estimates are based on EU transparency data and are directional rather than exact, so I'd label them clearly as estimates in a client-facing audit. AdLens CompetitionAds

My pick: Adsmom if you want a polished, repeatable competitive audit → pitch deck workflow; AdScanner.Ai if the creative screenshots/teardown are the centerpiece.

If you tell me your typical client size and whether you mainly pitch Meta, Google, TikTok, or all three, I can narrow it to the best 2–3 options and compare pricing/features.

For a boutique agency pitching new clients, the strongest fits are tools that can turn competitor research into a polished pitch-ready audit deck: competitor creatives/screenshots, messaging analysis, channel mix, and spend estimates. A few good options:

My shortlist for a boutique agency:

1. AdClarity — best “wow factor” for a new-business pitch where you want to say: “Here’s what your competitors are spending, where they’re showing up, and what creative they’re using.” BIScience Insights
2. AdScanner.Ai — better if your pitches are mostly Meta/TikTok/YouTube creative strategy and you need fast teardown reports. AdScanner.Ai
3. MediaRadar — good for higher-value B2B or enterprise prospects where competitive media activity matters. MediaRadar

One caveat: commercial ad spend estimates are modeled estimates, not usually exact competitor budgets (except in some verified-spend datasets). Treat them as directional benchmarks rather than audited financial figures. AdEye

For a boutique agency, I’d usually optimize for report quality and speed-to-pitch, not the biggest database. A tool that lets you produce a 10–20 page branded competitive audit in a few hours often creates more sales value than a massive enterprise dashboard.

If your main goal is “tell me the moment a competitor launches a new ad creative or promotion,” I’d choose based on where your competitors advertise:

My recommendation

For a marketing team that wants automatic alerts, I'd lean toward Visualping + native ad libraries rather than buying an expensive “ad spy” platform immediately.

Visualping can monitor competitor pages and alert you when pricing, promotional messaging, CTAs, product pages, or other website content changes; it can also send notifications and AI summaries. Visualping Visualping

For new ad creatives specifically, native ad libraries are better because they provide the actual advertising data. Meta's Ad Library, for example, is free and is specifically designed to expose ads running across Meta's platforms. Visualping Mako Metrics

If you need one dashboard across Meta + TikTok + Google/YouTube, I'd instead look at a dedicated ad-intelligence platform. The important distinction is that these tools vary substantially in platform coverage, historical data, creative metadata, and alerting capabilities. adlibrary.com

If you tell me your industry + whether you're mainly watching Meta, TikTok, Google, or all three, I can narrow this down to the 3 best tools and compare their pricing, alert speed, and coverage.

If your main requirement is “alert me when a competitor launches a new creative or promotion”, I’d choose based on how broad your monitoring needs are:

My pick: Foreplay

foreplay.co

For what you're describing, Foreplay is probably the best starting point. It has competitor tracking, ad-activity status, historical creatives, and coverage across Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn. Its Discovery product specifically lets you track competitor campaigns and see how long ads have been active. Foreplay

The important distinction is that you're not really looking for an “ad spy” database. You want a monitoring/alerting system:

Competitor launches new ad → tool detects it → you get notified → you can see creative, copy, offer/promotion, landing page, and launch date.

If you have 10–50+ competitors and want this to become a systematic competitive-intelligence process, I'd look harder at GetCrux. It is positioned specifically around monitoring competitor ads, hooks, offers, CTAs, creative themes, cadence and active days across multiple channels. GetCrux

getcrux.ai

One important caveat

If you only care about Meta, don't pay for a tool immediately. Meta's Ad Library is free and gives you visibility into active Facebook/Instagram ads; paid tools primarily add historical data, organization, monitoring and automation on top. Exposure

If you tell me (1) your industry, (2) how many competitors you want to watch, and (3) whether you care about Meta/TikTok/Google, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 best tools and approximate cost for your use case.

If you mean a specific enterprise marketing platform, I’d need the solution names or a bit more context to identify it confidently. The capability you’re describing is typically a solution that combines competitive ad intelligence (competitor spend, creatives, placements, messaging) with marketing analytics/attribution so you can connect competitive activity to your own performance and conversion outcomes.

If you give me the vendor/product options, I can tell you which one fits.

If you mean an enterprise marketing platform that combines competitive ad intelligence with analytics/attribution, the closest fits are typically:

• Similarweb — strong for competitive ad intelligence (seeing competitors’ digital strategies, traffic sources, paid search/display insights) and often paired with enterprise analytics stacks for market benchmarking.
• Salesforce Marketing Intelligence — designed to connect marketing performance data with analytics and attribution reporting, including paid media connectors and custom attribution capabilities. Salesforce
• Amazon Marketing Cloud — useful for advertisers needing privacy-safe ad measurement, audience analysis, and combining advertising signals with their own data. Amazon Ads
• GetCrux — focused on connecting ad-platform data with warehouses, BI tools, attribution systems, and first-party performance data for enterprise reporting. GetCrux
• Ringside Data — combines marketing data integration, attribution modeling, dashboards, and BI connectivity. Ringside Data

If your requirement is specifically “competitive ads + attribution in one workflow”, you may be looking for a combination rather than a single product:

1. Competitive intelligence layer (e.g., Similarweb-type tools)
2. Marketing analytics/warehouse layer (e.g., Salesforce Marketing Intelligence, BI stack, or ad analytics platforms)
3. Attribution model (multi-touch, incrementality, MMM, or revenue attribution)

If you share your stack (e.g., Salesforce, Adobe, Google Analytics 4, Snowflake, Tableau, HubSpot, etc.) and whether you need B2B, ecommerce, or app marketing, I can narrow it down.

If your priority is agency/client-ready reporting + competitor spend + top ads, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: Adbeat

If what you mean is literally “show my client what competitors are spending, which ads they're running, and how the competitors compare”, Adbeat is probably the closest fit. It supports competitive benchmarking around ad spend and share of voice, side-by-side comparisons, and exports complete reports as PDF, CSV, or presentation-ready PowerPoint. Adbeat Adbeat

Best value for a typical agency: Semrush

Semrush is stronger if you want one platform covering more than competitive ads. Its Advertising Research gives you competitor estimated spend/traffic cost, paid keywords, competitors, ad copy, and landing pages, and the data can be exported. Its My Reports system can turn the research into client PDFs, with higher-tier reporting supporting branding/white-labeling and scheduled delivery. Semrush Semrush Semrush

Best specifically for easy client PDFs: SpyFu

SpyFu is particularly agency-friendly for this use case. It can generate ready-to-send PDFs from PPC Overview, PPC Competitors, PPC Keywords, and Ad History, and lets you choose which sections appear. Its agency reports can also be branded with your own logo and notes. SpyFu Help Center SpyFu SpyFu

One important caveat: competitor “spend” is estimated, not the competitor's actual media invoice/budget. Semrush, for example, describes its figure as the estimated cost required to generate the observed paid traffic. Semrush

Bottom line:

• Display/social/programmatic + impressive decks → Adbeat
• All-around agency reporting → Semrush
• PPC competitor reports with minimal fuss → SpyFu
• Enterprise, cross-channel intelligence → Similarweb

If you tell me whether your agency mainly runs Google Ads, Meta, or both, I can narrow this to the best 2 platforms and compare pricing/reporting/competitor-ad coverage.

If what you mean is literally “show my client what competitors are spending, which ads they're running, and how the competitors compare”, Adbeat is probably the closest fit. It supports competitive benchmarking around ad spend and share of voice, side-by-side comparisons, and exports complete reports as PDF, CSV, or presentation-ready PowerPoint. Adbeat Adbeat

Best value for a typical agency: Semrush

Semrush is stronger if you want one platform covering more than competitive ads. Its Advertising Research gives you competitor estimated spend/traffic cost, paid keywords, competitors, ad copy, and landing pages, and the data can be exported. Its My Reports system can turn the research into client PDFs, with higher-tier reporting supporting branding/white-labeling and scheduled delivery. Semrush Semrush Semrush

Best specifically for easy client PDFs: SpyFu

SpyFu is particularly agency-friendly for this use case. It can generate ready-to-send PDFs from PPC Overview, PPC Competitors, PPC Keywords, and Ad History, and lets you choose which sections appear. Its agency reports can also be branded with your own logo and notes. help.spyfu.com spyfu.com spyfu.com

One important caveat: competitor “spend” is estimated, not the competitor's actual media invoice/budget. Semrush, for example, describes its figure as the estimated cost required to generate the observed paid traffic.

Bottom line:

If your priority is client-ready reporting, especially reports that show competitor spend + top ads, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: Adbeat

If by "competitor spend" you specifically mean estimated competitor media spend, Adbeat is the strongest fit. It explicitly provides estimated ad spend, top creatives, landing pages, competitive benchmarking, and side-by-side spend comparisons. Crucially for an agency, it can export CSV, PDF, and presentation-ready PowerPoint reports. Adbeat

adbeat.com

If the deliverable matters more than the intelligence

SMAQ looks particularly interesting for an agency because it actually builds the client deck: it combines your client's Google/Meta data with competitor ads and exports editable PowerPoint decks. Its competitor monitoring covers Meta Ad Library and Google Transparency Center. SMAQ SMAQ

smaq.io

If you mainly need Meta competitor reports

Mako Metrics is much more focused: it produces white-label PDFs, saved creative catalogs, raw ad data, and client-tagged reports. Its agency plan is currently listed at $149.99/month for 10 reports/month. However, it doesn't claim private competitor spend, so I wouldn't choose it if spend estimates are your core requirement. Mako Metrics

makometrics.com

Bottom line:

• "Show my client what competitors are spending and which ads dominate" → Adbeat
• "Automatically produce my monthly client reporting deck, including competitor ads" → SMAQ
• "Give me polished white-label Meta competitor reports cheaply" → Mako Metrics

One important caveat: competitor spend is generally estimated, not actual private ad-account spend. Public ad libraries can reliably show ads and other public signals, but they don't reveal a competitor's true spend, ROAS, or revenue. VideoIntelHQ Advertisng

If you tell me whether you're mainly running Meta, Google, or both, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 options for an agency and compare pricing, white-labeling, exports, and data quality.

If the deliverable matters more than the intelligence

SMAQ looks particularly interesting for an agency because it actually builds the client deck: it combines your client's Google/Meta data with competitor ads and exports editable PowerPoint decks. Its competitor monitoring covers Meta Ad Library and Google Transparency Center. smaq.io smaq.io

smaq.io

If you mainly need Meta competitor reports

Mako Metrics is much more focused: it produces white-label PDFs, saved creative catalogs, raw ad data, and client-tagged reports. Its agency plan is currently listed at $149.99/month for 10 reports/month. However, it doesn't claim private competitor spend, so I wouldn't choose it if spend estimates are your core requirement.

If you mean “I want to see where competitors are running video ads, what creatives they’re using, and approximate performance (views/impressions/spend)”, I’d look at ad intelligence platforms, not just ad libraries. No tool can truly reveal a competitor’s private ad account data, but the better ones use crawled ads, platform signals, and modeled estimates. Backlinko

Here are the strongest options by use case:

My recommendation by scenario

• YouTube-first DTC/ecommerce brand: Start with AdSee AI or Pathfinder. They’re closest to your stated need because they focus on video ads and performance signals. AdSee AI Pathfinder
• Agency managing many clients: Look at Pathmatics or AdClarity for broader competitive reporting. Udonis Mobile Marketing Agency
• CTV/streaming competitors (Roku, Hulu, etc.): Look at MediaRadar, AdClarity, or similar CTV intelligence tools. Udonis Mobile Marketing Agency MediaRadar

A few things I’d verify before paying:

• Does it show placement/channel (YouTube, CTV, publisher, country)?
• Does it show historical creatives or only current ads?
• Are “views” actual platform views or modeled estimates?
• Can it track competitor launches and creative changes over time?

If you tell me the channel you care about (YouTube, Meta, TikTok, CTV, programmatic) and your budget range, I can narrow it to 2–3 tools.

If your goal is specifically “show me what competitors are running, where they're running it, and give me a reasonable estimate of reach/views”, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: BigSpy

For the exact use case you described, BigSpy is probably the closest fit. Its current Ad Library lets you search by advertiser and filter by network, country/region, creative format, engagement, etc., and sort by estimated impressions. bigspy.combigspy.com

It also lets you research a specific competitor by advertiser and see things like running days, last-seen date, impressions, likes/comments/shares and placement/network information. bigspy.com

One important caveat: “estimated impressions” are not the same thing as actual video views. BigSpy explicitly says its impression figure is an algorithmic estimate and isn't strictly equal to views. bigspy.combigspy.com So I'd use the number as a competitive signal, not as ground truth.

If you're primarily interested in creative strategy

I'd lean toward Foreplay. Its Discovery product is particularly good for identifying long-running competitor ads, organizing creative, analyzing hooks/angles, and building a competitor matrix. www.foreplay.co

Foreplay also now offers an API with competitor ad data, including videos, active status, transcription and creative-velocity data, which is interesting if you're trying to build your own internal intelligence tool. www.foreplay.co

Bottom line:

• Need estimated exposure + broad competitive intelligence → BigSpy
• Need to understand why competitor video ads are working → Foreplay
• Need free, first-party confirmation of Meta ads → Meta Ad Library
• Need to monitor a defined list of competitors continuously → Foreplay Spyder

If you tell me which platforms matter most (YouTube, TikTok, Meta, etc.) and whether you need actual placement-level data or just estimated reach, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools that are genuinely worth paying for.

Yes. If your main requirement is “show me what competitor X is running in country Y, including the actual creative”, I’d shortlist these:

• adspyder.io — probably the strongest all-in-one option for your use case. It says it indexes 1B+ live creatives across 15+ platforms and lets you filter by country, advertiser/domain, platform, etc. AdSpyder
• adintels.com — more focused on ongoing competitive intelligence. Its pitch specifically includes country-by-country geographic intelligence, live campaign tracking, and alerts. adIntels
• adeye.ai — good if you care about creative analysis rather than just collecting ads. It aggregates Meta, Google, TikTok and YouTube and adds AI tagging for hooks, angles and formats. AdEye
• adlibrary.com — useful unified search across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Google, LinkedIn and other networks. adlibrary.com

If you're primarily on Meta + TikTok

You can also go directly to the platforms' free libraries:

• Meta Ad Library — best for inspecting Facebook/Instagram competitor creatives by country.
• ads.tiktok.com — particularly useful for country/region-specific TikTok creative research. TikTok explicitly supports filtering Top Ads by Region, industry, objective, etc. TikTok For Business TikTok For Business

One important distinction: ad-library geo filtering ≠ seeing exactly what a user in that country is served. For Google Search, for example, you often want a geo-SERP tool in addition to an ad library because auction results can vary by location, query, device, language, and personalization.

My pick for a global performance-marketing team: start with AdSpyder if you want broad cross-platform/country coverage; look at AdIntels if continuous monitoring and alerts are more important. For TikTok creative specifically, I'd still use TikTok's own Creative Center alongside either one.

If you tell me which platforms you buy on (Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.) and roughly how many countries, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools that actually fit rather than giving you a generic ad-spy list.

Yes. If your key requirement is “show me the creatives a competitor is running in country X”, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: Similarweb

For a global advertiser, Similarweb is probably the strongest fit if you need country-by-country competitive intelligence rather than simply a Facebook/TikTok swipe file.

Its Creatives product explicitly lets you select a country, competitor, timeframe, publisher and ad network, and inspect the actual creative, copy, format, first/last seen dates and active days. It currently lists country filters including the US, UK, France, Germany, India, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Canada, etc. support.similarweb.com

Its broader Ad Intelligence product also covers competitors' paid search, display and social intelligence and has geographic competitive analysis. support.similarweb.com

If creative volume is the priority

BigSpy is worth testing. Its current search supports narrowing global creatives by country/region, network, format, engagement and other filters, which is closer to the classic “ad spy” workflow. bigspy.com

AdSpyder is interesting if you want breadth: it claims 15+ platforms and 100+ countries, with country, platform, brand/domain and other filters in a single library. adspyder.io

One important caveat

No third-party tool can perfectly tell you “this is everything the competitor showed to users in Germany.” Coverage depends on how the provider collects/indexes ads. For Meta/TikTok specifically, the native transparency libraries are still useful for validating what you're seeing. Meta's library, for example, lets you select the country before examining an advertiser's ads. adlibrary.com

For your use case, I'd test Similarweb vs. BigSpy first: put 5–10 competitors into both and compare US vs. UK vs. Germany vs. Australia. The winner should be the one that actually gives you the geographic creative coverage you need, rather than whichever has the biggest advertised database.

Yes. If your key requirement is “show me competitor ads across platforms, then filter by creative format + campaign objective”, there are a few tools worth looking at.

My pick: AdSpyder

AdSpyder is probably the best fit for cross-platform competitive research right now.

It aggregates ads from 15+ platforms including Google, Meta, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Amazon, Bing, Pinterest, Reddit and others, and says it supports 30+ filters, including:

• Platform
• Ad format
• Creative type
• Country
• Date range
• Keyword
• Brand/domain
• CPC range
• Landing page
• Run duration

That makes it much closer to a true cross-platform competitor ad database than the individual platform libraries. AdSpyder

adspyder.io

If you're primarily Meta/TikTok/ecommerce: Minea

Minea is my second choice, and potentially the better choice for an ecommerce brand.

It focuses on Meta, TikTok and Pinterest and provides filters around things like ad format, spend signals, engagement, targeting and account type, plus creative/performance analysis. Minea Minea

minea.com

BigSpy is the budget-friendly alternative

BigSpy has a particularly strong creative-filtering system. You can filter by image/video/carousel/HTML, network, country, language, duration, dimensions, engagement, landing-page type and—importantly for Meta/Instagram—CTA/marketing objective such as conversion, traffic, lead generation, engagement, app download and shopping. BigSpy

It currently covers 10 networks including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Pinterest and others. BigSpy

bigspy.com

Quick comparison

One caveat: “objective” is much harder to normalize across platforms than format. A Meta conversion campaign, Google Search campaign, TikTok conversion campaign, and LinkedIn lead-gen campaign don't expose identical objective data. So I'd be wary of any tool claiming it can give you a perfectly standardized cross-platform “objective” filter.

If your exact workflow is something like “find every competitor's video ads → only conversion/lead-gen campaigns → Meta + TikTok + Google → US → last 90 days”, I'd choose AdSpyder for breadth and Minea/BigSpy for deeper creative filtering.

If you tell me which platforms you care about (e.g. Meta + TikTok + Google + LinkedIn) and whether you're ecommerce, SaaS, or agency, I can narrow this down to the best 1–2 tools and compare their current pricing/features.

Yes. What you’re describing is an ad-intelligence / ad-spy platform: search competitors across multiple ad networks, then narrow the results by things like platform, format, objective, country, date, and creative type.

My pick: AdSpyder

AdSpyder is probably the closest match to your exact requirement. It currently claims coverage of 15+ platforms including Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, Reddit, Pinterest, etc., with 30+ filters including platform, country, date range, ad format, keyword, domain, and creative type. AdSpyder

adspyder.io

The big advantage is that you can do something like:

Competitor → TikTok + Meta → video → particular objective/intent → recent ads → sort by longevity

rather than opening five different native ad libraries.

How I'd rank the options

• AdSpyder — best for cross-platform competitor intelligence. Broadest platform coverage and lots of filtering. AdSpyder
• Foreplay — best for creative research/swipe files. Particularly good if you want to save, organize, tag, and brief from competitor ads. It supports Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn and other major platforms, with format and platform filtering. Foreplay Foreplay
• BigSpy — best budget option. Has filters for network, country, time period and creative format (image/video/carousel/HTML), with broad network coverage. BigSpy
• AdSpy — best if you're heavily focused on Meta and want very deep search. Its database/search capabilities are substantial, but it's less compelling if you genuinely need many platforms. AdSpy
• Native libraries — best free/freshness option. TikTok's Creative Center, Meta Ad Library, Google Ads Transparency Center, and LinkedIn's library give you the underlying data directly, but you lose the unified cross-platform workflow. AMZFinder

One important caveat about “objective”

Format filtering is common; objective filtering is trickier. Platforms don't expose identical campaign-objective data, and third-party tools can't reliably know the actual optimization objective for every competitor ad. TikTok's own library, for example, explicitly exposes Objective + Ad Format filters. AMZFinder

So if your requirement is specifically:

“Show me competitor ads across Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn, filtered by objective AND format.”

I'd test AdSpyder first, but I'd verify exactly which objective fields it exposes for each network before paying. If you're primarily doing creative/format research rather than campaign-objective analysis, I'd lean Foreplay instead.

If you tell me which platforms you care about (e.g. Meta + TikTok + Google + LinkedIn) and whether you're doing SaaS, ecommerce, agency, or something else, I can narrow this to the 2–3 best tools and compare their actual filters/pricing.

If you want to monitor competitors’ influencer campaigns, sponsored posts, branded content, and native ads, you usually need a combination of influencer intelligence + ad intelligence tools. No single platform perfectly captures every sponsored placement because many influencer posts are organic-looking and not disclosed through ad libraries.

Here are the main options:

If your priority is influencer/branded content specifically

I would shortlist:

1. Yoloco — strongest fit if you need to answer “which creators are competitors paying, what posts did they publish, and how did they perform?” Yoloco
2. CreatorDen — good for Instagram-heavy influencer benchmarking and branded content share-of-voice. CreatorDen
3. CreatorVet — useful if your focus is competitor creator bookings and sponsored YouTube/Instagram placements. CreatorVet

If your priority is native ads (Taboola/Outbrain-style)

Look at:

• OpenAdLibrary for native ad discovery and competitor funnel tracking. OpenAdLibrary
• MediaRadar for broader enterprise media intelligence. MediaRadar

A typical competitive monitoring stack

Many brands combine:

• Influencer layer: Yoloco / CreatorDen
• Paid social layer: Meta Ad Library + TikTok Creative Center + AdSpyder
• Native/display layer: OpenAdLibrary or MediaRadar
• Creative intelligence layer: Spyglass for analyzing hooks, formats, and messaging patterns

If you share your main channels (e.g., TikTok Shop, Instagram, YouTube, DTC/ecommerce, B2B, beauty, gaming, etc.) and whether you need historical archives or real-time alerts, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 platforms.

Yes — but no single platform is equally strong at both influencer/sponsored creator content and native-network ads.

Best fits

• yoloco.io — probably the closest match if your priority is competitors' influencer-sponsored posts. It specifically tracks sponsored creator content across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Telegram, including creators, posts, and performance metrics. Yoloco
• help.influencekit.com — strong for competitive influencer intelligence: identifies creators working with competitors and surfaces reach, engagement, and mention frequency. InfluenceKit Help Center
• openadlibrary.com — strong for native ads specifically. It captures ads across Taboola, Outbrain, MGID, RevContent, MSN, Yahoo and other native networks, with historical creatives and landing-page/funnel information. OpenAdLibrary OpenAdLibrary
• adspyder.io — better if you want a broad multi-platform paid-ad view across Meta, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, display, etc.; it isn't as specialized in influencer sponsorships. AdSpyder
• sproutsocial.com — useful for enterprise social/influencer competitive intelligence, including tracking competitor creator partnerships across sponsored and organic content. Sprout Social

What I'd use

If your requirement is literally:

"Tell me which influencers competitors are paying + capture their sponsored posts + show me their native ads."

I'd evaluate Yoloco + OpenAdLibrary as a two-tool stack. Yoloco covers the creator/sponsorship side; OpenAdLibrary covers the native-ad ecosystem. Yoloco OpenAdLibrary

If you instead want one enterprise dashboard covering paid social + influencer + native + creative intelligence, I'd look at broader competitive-intelligence platforms and verify their actual influencer and native coverage during the demo—many "ad spy" products only capture platform ad libraries and don't reliably identify organic-looking influencer sponsorships.

If you tell me your competitor channels (e.g. Instagram/TikTok/YouTube + Taboola/Outbrain), I can narrow this to the 3 best platforms and compare coverage, historical data, alerts, API access, and approximate pricing.

Yes. If you mean “show me the competitor ad, the landing page it drives to, and the conversion mechanism/CTA so CRO and paid-media teams can analyze the whole funnel together,” there are a few tools worth looking at.

Best fits

• foreplay.co — probably the strongest established option for a paid creative + CRO workflow. Spyder tracks competitor Meta ads, organizes creative tests, and maintains an archive of the landing pages those ads drive to. Foreplay also has team collaboration, notes, sharing, and creative reporting. Foreplay Foreplay Foreplay
• funnelspy.ai — closest to exactly what you're describing. It harvests competitor ads, follows destination URLs, renders landing pages, extracts things like headline, CTA, offer, and trust signals, and assembles the pieces into a visual funnel map. FunnelSpy
• adswipe.io — particularly interesting for lead-gen teams. It links an ad to its funnel type, destination landing page, CTA, Messenger flow, or lead form, and can expose the qualifying questions in the form. AdSwipe
• adzenith.com — more of a broader competitive-acquisition intelligence product. It explicitly connects creative + placement + GEO + platform + landing-page context, which could be useful for a paid/CRO research process. Adzenith
• openadlibrary.com — interesting if you're doing native advertising. It traces ads through to the actual advertiser landing page and claims to capture the full click trail. OpenAdLibrary

How I'd think about the market

The important distinction is that most “ad spy” tools stop at the creative. The more interesting category is emerging around creative-to-funnel intelligence: What ad angle → which offer → which landing page → which CTA/form → which conversion mechanism? FunnelSpy is unusually explicit about doing that, while Foreplay is stronger if the end goal is a shared research/creative workflow between paid and creative/CRO teams. FunnelSpy Foreplay

If you're evaluating this because you're looking to buy/build a tool for a CRO + paid-media team, I can also map the current competitors by features, pricing, data sources, funnel depth, and collaboration capabilities.

Yes. What you’re describing is competitive creative intelligence + funnel/CRO intelligence: not just “what ads are competitors running?” but ad → click destination → landing-page messaging → offer → CTA → conversion elements.

The closest fits I found are:

• Foreplay — probably the closest overall match. Its ad records include the creative, copy, CTA, landing-page URL, active status, and run duration. It also automatically captures landing-page screenshots on desktop/mobile and can show the landing pages associated with ads. Foreplay Foreplay Foreplay

foreplay.co

Best for: CRO + paid-media + creative teams building a shared competitor swipe/funnel library.

• Motion — stronger if your team also wants to connect competitor research with your own paid-media performance data. Motion explicitly positions its competitor intelligence around media mix, messaging/offer experiments, and top competitor landing pages. Motion

motionapp.com

It also now has an MCP integration and can audit landing pages connected to your ads against the ad messaging, identify CRO friction/trust gaps, and generate an A/B-test backlog. Motion Help Center Motion Help Center

• CreativeIntel — more lightweight, but interesting for competitor monitoring. It lets you track a competitor from their website/Ad Library URL and monitor new ads, offer changes, messaging shifts, and price changes. CreativeIntel

getcreativeintel.com

If I were evaluating this for a CRO + paid team

I'd put Foreplay first if your desired workflow is:

Competitor → ad creative → hook → offer → CTA → landing page → screenshot → page structure → conversion elements → save/share with team → derive tests for our funnel.

Foreplay is unusually close because it explicitly stores the ad-to-landing-page relationship, rather than treating the ad and landing page as separate research exercises. Foreplay Foreplay

Motion would be my second choice if the priority is more:

Our ad → our performance data → creative patterns → competitor ads → competitor landing pages → CRO recommendations → testing roadmap.

One caveat: none of these can see a competitor's actual conversion rate, CPA, or funnel conversion rate. They can observe the funnel architecture and signals—creative longevity, messaging, offers, landing pages, CTAs, etc.—but not the competitor's private conversion data.

If you tell me whether you're DTC/ecommerce, SaaS, lead gen, or an agency, I can narrow this down to the 3–5 tools that actually map the entire competitor ad → landing page → CRO funnel, including tools that go deeper than Foreplay/Motion.

If you mean one competitive-intelligence dashboard that ties together competitor ads → landing pages → estimated spend across search/social, the strongest fit right now is Similarweb.

Best fits

*Similarweb's current Ad Intelligence positioning covers search, display and social; its documentation says social expansion is being rolled out, with Meta as an initial network. Similarweb Similarweb

Why I'd start with Similarweb

Its Ad Intelligence is unusually close to your requested workflow: you can see competitor campaigns, actual creatives, landing pages, publishers, impressions and estimated spend, with cross-channel views spanning search, display and social. Similarweb Similarweb

Its Paid Landing Page Analyzer also connects the landing-page URL to paid traffic, keywords, ad strategy and estimated CPC spend, so you don't have to manually stitch an ad-spy tool to a separate website-analysis tool. Similarweb Similarweb

And its Advertiser Activity view is specifically designed to consolidate an advertiser's spend, impressions, visits and campaign activity across channels. The estimates are modeled/sampled rather than actual advertiser financials, so I'd treat spend as directional rather than literal. Similarweb

Interesting current addition: Similarweb launched AI Ads in August 2026, adding visibility into ads appearing in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews, including the actual creative and destination landing page. Similarweb

When I'd choose Semrush instead

semrush.com is probably better if your competitive research is primarily Google Search/Shopping + SEO. Its Advertising Research gives you competitor ads, paid keywords, historical activity, landing pages and estimated traffic cost/spend. semrush.com semrush.com

So, in shorthand:

Need a cross-channel "what are they running, where does it go, and roughly how much are they spending?" dashboard → Similarweb.

Need a deeper PPC/SEO research workstation → Semrush.

If you tell me whether you're researching B2B SaaS, ecommerce, consumer apps, or agencies, I can narrow this down to the 3–5 tools that are actually worth evaluating for that use case.

Yes. If you want one dashboard that ties competitor ads → landing pages → estimated spend, the strongest fit right now is Similarweb.

Best options

Similarweb is the closest match to your description. Its Ad Intelligence product explicitly combines competitor display, social and search, with creatives, landing pages, keywords and spend trends. www.similarweb.comsupport.similarweb.com

Its Paid Landing Pages view is particularly relevant: you can see the landing page, ads/keywords driving traffic to it, traffic share, and estimated CPC spend associated with the URL. www.similarweb.com

Similarweb Ad Intelligence

Where Semrush fits

Semrush is arguably better if your research is primarily Google Search/PPC. Its Advertising Research gives you competitors' paid keywords, actual ad copy, ad history, landing pages and estimated traffic cost/spend. www.semrush.com

Semrush Advertising Toolkit

My take

If your workflow is:

Competitor → see every active ad → click through to landing page → understand offer/message → estimate how much they're spending → compare across search/social/display

I'd start with Similarweb.

If it's:

Competitor → keywords → Google ads → landing pages → estimated PPC budget

I'd choose Semrush.

And if you're especially interested in display advertising, publishers, creatives and media-buying strategy, look at Adbeat; it specifically surfaces media-buying strategies, creatives, landing pages and estimated spend. www.adbeat.com

Adbeat

One caveat: "estimated spend" is modeled data, not the competitor's actual media invoices. Similarweb, for example, says its tracked estimates are based on sampled publisher/network signals and should be treated as directional rather than total spend. www.similarweb.comsupport.similarweb.com

If you tell me whether you're researching B2B SaaS, DTC/ecommerce, agencies, or another category, I can narrow this down to the 3 best tools and compare their actual coverage, pricing, and dashboard workflow.